“THE CONTINUED VIOLENT DESTRUCTION OF CONFLICT”: SEAWRIGHT’S HIDDEN

SEAWRIGHT, Paul. Hidden. With Essays by Mark Durden and John Stathatos. (London): Imperial War Museum, (2003). Oblong folio, original brown cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $450.

First edition of this timely photobook on the war in Afghanistan, with 29 color plates.

“In June 2003, the Irish photographer Paul Seawright was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London to make an artistic response to the war in Afghanistan… Seawright visited remote areas of the country, sometimes under dangerous conditions… [He] applies a distanced, cool, New Objectivity style to an emotional issue, conjuring up a landscape of malevolence… Seawright photographs the desert landscape of Afghanistan… in an intensely contained, luminous manner, draining out overtly romantic colour but emphasizing the desert’s beauty (Parr & Badger I:285).

A fine copy.